


anger and coffee, feeling mean

by akisazame



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Episode: s02e07 Who's the Cool Girl Josh Is Dating?, F/M, Fake-Out Make-Out, canon-typical light stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26045020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame
Summary: "Oh my god, chill out," she snaps, turning to face the person, and then tilting her head back to lookupat a man in a perfectly tailored suit who's at least a foot taller than she is. He's good-looking in that manufactured Patrick Bateman sort of way, blond hair and blue eyes like Hitler's wet dream, and his face is all hard lines as he glares down at her."She'll have a latte," the freakishly tall man tells the barista, stepping around Rebecca to stand at the counter. He glances back at her appraisingly before adding, "Sugar free, skim milk."
Relationships: Rebecca Bunch/Nathaniel Plimpton
Comments: 18
Kudos: 44
Collections: Rethaniel Appreciation Week





	anger and coffee, feeling mean

**Author's Note:**

> for rethaniel appreciation week day 6 - alternate universe. title from Black Coffee by Black Flag, which is sonically not them but lyrically completely them. big thanks to [the_northerlies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_northerlies/pseuds/the_northerlies) and [hoko_onchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoko_onchi/pseuds/hoko_onchi) for the beta.

Silver Lake is approximately 20 miles from West Covina, which somehow translates to a 35 minute drive down the 10 at midday. Even after Rebecca manages to escape from the eternal crush of the freeway, there is still parking to contend with, and it's another 15 minutes before she finally finds an unoccupied space on the street, roughly six blocks from Silver Brew.

"You know he's not going to be there," Heather had told her, leaning against the kitchen counter and staring at her phone.

Rebecca snorted, not even sparing a glance over her shoulder as she slipped her shoes on next to the front door. "Obviously not. That post was from yesterday. But they could go back, and that's when I'll strike. Like a lion. Or a tiger."

"Or a bear, oh my? Also, remind me what the plan is after you crash Josh's hypothetical coffee date with his hot new girlfriend?"

"I just want to see her in person," Rebecca explained, very logically. "Instagram photos are not reliable metrics for human attractiveness. Maybe in real life she has a huge embarrassing wart."

"Mmm, yes," Heather agreed, "Huge Embarrassing Wart Remover is such a great filter. Not as good as Koala but like, what even is, right?"

Rebecca had asked Valencia to accompany her to the hipster coffee shop that had posted the photo of Josh Chan engaging in overt PDA with his hideously beautiful new girlfriend, but apparently teaching yoga was more important than viewing this brazen hussy in the flesh. Technically, Rebecca was also supposed to be working, but she'd stopped at the office on her way to the freeway, grabbed a random case file off her desk, and walked right back out. It wasn't like she was particularly relishing the idea of being in the same office as Paula anyway, not while Rebecca was waiting for the apology that she was certainly owed and seemed less and less likely to get. Thus, Rebecca is here, at Silver Brew in Silver Spring, by herself with laptop and case file in hand, staring up at a menu with entirely too many options.

Rebecca isn't a fancy coffee virgin by any stretch of the imagination, but this all seems excessive. What the fuck is a Neapolitan flip? It sounds like a sex move involving ice cream. She's about to ask the mustachioed gentleman behind the counter exactly what "micro-lot" is supposed to mean when whoever's standing behind her noisily clears their throat and then, when she doesn't make any sort of acknowledgment, clears their throat a second time.

"Oh my god, chill out," she snaps, turning to face the person, and then tilting her head back to look _up_ at a man in a perfectly tailored suit who's at least a foot taller than she is. He's good-looking in that manufactured Patrick Bateman sort of way, blond hair and blue eyes like Hitler's wet dream, and his face is all hard lines as he glares down at her.

"She'll have a latte," the freakishly tall man tells the barista, stepping around Rebecca to stand at the counter. He glances back at her appraisingly before adding, "Sugar free, skim milk."

"Oh, screw you, dude," she says, stomping up to stand beside him. "What is this, 1956? Nice casual body shaming, by the way."

"And the usual for me," the man goes on, ignoring Rebecca entirely. "Put them both on my tab, Ichabod." The barista — Ichabod, she guesses? sounds like an 1840s sea captain — nods and starts making the drinks, apparently blind to the massive women's rights infractions that are taking place right in front of him, leaving Rebecca and her new least favorite person standing alone at the counter.

"Who even has a tab at a coffee shop?" Rebecca demands. " _Fine,_ " she huffs out when the attractive misogynist once again refuses to acknowledge her. There's only one free table in the whole shop, so Rebecca marches off towards it. If this guy is so backwards, he shouldn't have a problem delivering the drink she didn't even want.

She's got her laptop open by the time the tall man comes over and sets Rebecca's mug on the table with a loud clatter, and she almost thanks him reflexively before remembering how much he sucks. She expects him to walk away, to take his environmentally conscious reusable coffee cup and go, but instead he slides onto the stool across from her and sets his briefcase flat on the table.

" _Excuse_ you," Rebecca says.

The man looks up, like he's noticing her for the first time. "Excuse me," he agrees, before turning his attention back to clicking open the clasps on his briefcase.

"You can't just sit here," Rebecca tells him.

"Oh?" he has the audacity to say with his stupid mouth. "I think I can, actually."

Rebecca snorts and tosses her hair back, the picture of nonchalance. This guy is obviously trying to get a rise out of her, and she won't keep falling for his bait. "Do what you want," she says, directing her attention to her laptop screen, where she already has tabs open for Josh's Instagram, Anna's work Instagram, and Silver Brew. The handsome asshole takes out his own laptop, followed by a folder which he opens to reveal what appears to be some kind of legal brief.

They sit in silence for a long stretch of time, the man constantly typing and periodically turning pages in his brief, Rebecca despondently watching the door and hitting refresh on all of her Instagram tabs. Eventually she takes a sip of her latte, which is completely flavorless thanks to the lack of fat and sugar but, hey, at least it was free. Once the latte is gone, Rebecca hooks her finger into the curve of the handle and wriggles it back and forth, just for something to do with her hands that isn't hitting F5 _again_ and waiting while that picture of Josh and Anna eating each others' faces slowly reloads over the free wifi.

After maybe thirty seconds of this, the man's head snaps up and he demands, "Don't you have anything better to do?"

"No," Rebecca tells him, both indignantly and not-entirely-truthfully.

"Shocking," the man replies, rolling his eyes in a highly unappealing way. "If you don't mind, some of us are here to do actual work."

"I have actual work." She gestures at the case file she'd taken from the office, which, admittedly, she hasn't touched since she sat down. "What do you have that's so important?" she fires back, reaching out and snatching the brief from his side of the table before he has a chance to react. "Foreclosure, very classy."

He leans across the table with his dumb long arms and attempts to grab the paper out of her hand, but she dodges, standing up and raising her arm over her head so it's just out of his reach. "Don't be a child."

" _Nathaniel Plimpton the Third, Esquire,_ " she reads aloud from the first page, then tosses the brief down on the table. " _You're_ Nathaniel Plimpton, from Plimpton, Plimpton and Plimpton?"

"My fame precedes me," Nathaniel replies in an extremely not-humble way.

"Your _dad's_ fame precedes you," Rebecca counters. She sees something falter in Nathaniel's expression for just a second and thinks _ha, got you._ "What would daddy say if he knew you were hiding out in a hipster coffee shop?"

"I'm not hiding," Nathaniel insists, finally stretching far enough to retrieve the brief from Rebecca's hand. He settles back down on the stool very indignantly and flicks his wrist as though to remove Rebecca's girl cooties from the paper.

"Uh-huh, right." Rebecca folds her arms on the table and leans across, smirking. "You can't fool me. I used to be like you."

Nathaniel looks up from the paper, scans up and down Rebecca's body with his eyes, and says, "Doubtful."

"Oh, fuck off," Rebecca snaps. "I can read you like a book. Overbearing parents who never let you make any choices for yourself and only selectively love you, leading to a lifetime of overachievement accompanied by a smorgasbord of emotional detachment and abandonment issues. Right? Any of that ring a bell? I met you an hour ago and already know exactly who you are, Nathaniel Plimpton the Third, Esquire, so don't sit here on your high horse and pretend you're not just as miserable as me."

For a second Nathaniel just stares at her, expression open in a way it wasn’t before. The other coffee shop patrons are probably staring at her too, but she doesn't look away from Nathaniel, as if she could gaze right through the crystalline waters of his eyes and see the naked core of him buried beneath. But then he lets out an indignant breath and the moment is lost, his face shuttering closed. "I don't have to sit here and take this," he tells her, as though it wasn't his decision to sit at her table in the first place. He slams his laptop closed and shoves both it and the case file into his briefcase, snapping it shut with two sharp clicks. "Find someone else to psychoanalyze."

"Good riddance," she calls after him. She slumps in her seat, the tension she hadn't realized she'd been holding in her muscles draining away once the door closes behind him. Now that Nathaniel's not actively irritating her with his presence, she's annoyed at how quickly he was able to make her angry. She has far more important things to worry about now, like Josh and his fairy princess girlfriend, who still haven't shown themselves.

Well, Rebecca hopes; it's only a matter of time.

\--

Rebecca arrives at Silver Brew the following day two hours earlier than she had before, and has to abandon her latte and laptop inside when Ichabod tells her she can't eat food at her table unless it was purchased at the shop. While she's standing just outside the front door snarfing her bagel and lox, Nathaniel walks up, clearly intending to enter but stopping short when he sees her.

"Can I help you?" Rebecca asks, mouth still half-full of bagel. "This isn't a free show."

"Do you have a solicitation permit?" Nathaniel shoots back. "Otherwise, I think it might be."

Rebecca swallows noisily and crumples the remains of her bagel wrapper in her hands, glaring up at him and wishing she could set him on fire with her eyes. "What the hell is your problem? I thought you were done with me."

"I never said that," Nathaniel says, which Rebecca supposes is technically true. "I've been coming here for years. You're the one who's interloping."

"You must be confusing this coffee shop with your daddy's country club." Ha, there it is again, the tiny flicker of irritation on Nathaniel's face, gone as quickly as it came. Rebecca can't help the curl of satisfaction that zings through her body at being proven right.

This time, however, Nathaniel doesn't dignify it with a response; instead, he pivots and walks into Silver Brew as though he'd never stopped to talk to Rebecca in the first place.

Well, fine. It's not like she'd wanted to talk to him either, not now or the time before. She tosses her bagel wrapper into the trash can and studies her reflection in the glass of the window for any stray schmear on her face before following Nathaniel back inside.

She wishes she could feel surprised by the fact that Nathaniel is already sitting at the table where she'd left her things, but instead she just feels annoyance and a sharp sting of inevitability.

"This is the table I've been using since this place opened," Nathaniel tells her, before she can even think about asking. Before she can even think about _caring._ "You're welcome to sit somewhere else if you'd like."

She _would_ like, but even if she wanted to choose another random stranger to share a table with, none of the others have quite as good a view of the front door. This whole exercise will be pointless if Rebecca misses the moment that Josh comes in, with or without his water nymph girlfriend. As justified as her reasons are, she's not about to tell Nathaniel, so she just makes a face as she sits back down across from him, wishing he was shorter so that his laptop would obscure his smug bastard face.

The day drags and drags, even worse than the first. Nathaniel seems perfectly content to pretend Rebecca isn't there, which would be just fine by Rebecca if she didn't have to stare past all six hundred feet of him to keep watching the front door. She doesn't _want_ to talk to him, but it's so _boring,_ sitting here listening to smooth jazz and watching a door that doesn't want to deliver the one person — arguably two people — who Rebecca actually wants to see. Instead, out of idle curiosity, she types 'plimpton plimpton and plimpton' into Google and clicks through to the company website, then to the staff page, where she's greeted by large photos of the Nathaniels Plimpton: Senior, then Junior, then finally The Third, their lists of superlatives and accomplishments becoming progressively shorter as they go along. She leans in towards the screen, studying the photo of Nathaniel the Third, smiling beatifically in that successful-rich-man way that never ever reaches the eyes, then flickers her gaze up to the Nathaniel in front of her, who's frowning at his own computer as though it's offended him somehow.

A thousand questions bubble up inside of her — how much product does he use to get his hair to look like that? on a scale of one to ten, how excruciating is it to have his dad as his boss? is his dick proportional to— wait, what? — and she crushes each and every one back down.

"Stop staring," Nathaniel says, glancing up at her for a fraction of a second before looking away. "It's rude."

"You're rude," Rebecca tells him. He doesn't react, and that _really_ annoys her, considering he was the one who broke the silence in the first place. "You force yourself on me, table-sharing-wise, _twice,_ not to _mention_ the entire skim-milk-body-shaming incident, which was offensive on so many levels, and you haven't even asked for my name."

"I truly do not care."

"Well, it's Rebecca."

"Congratulations." There's a pause of several seconds while Rebecca silently fumes, and then Nathaniel's face changes, his frown becoming even more pronounced, a feat Rebecca had hardly thought possible. "Oh," Nathaniel says, actually looking at her for the first time in hours, or possibly ever. "Rebecca Bunch. I know you. The water case—"

"That's right," Rebecca says, straightening a little on her stool.

"—that you _lost,_ and then they gave you the key to the city anyway."

And just like that, Rebecca deflates. Well, she thinks, at least he didn't recognize her from pooping in a shoe on YouTube. "That's an uncharitable reading of the situation," she says, frowning down at her laptop keyboard. "As a matter of fact, the exposé using the evidence from that trial was a major flashpoint for—"

"Is it a narcissism thing?" Nathaniel interrupts.

Rebecca is so affronted that she audibly snorts. "Excuse me?"

"The way you won't stop talking about yourself," Nathaniel says, fluttering his hand towards her in a flippant gesture. 

"Wow," Rebecca says, both because she needs a moment to mentally regroup and because seriously, _wow._ "You are truly an unpleasant person, aren't you?"

Nathaniel flashes the same smile that he's giving on his firm's website, cool and collected and entirely false. "You don't win by being nice."

"Actually, you literally do. They have sayings about it and everything."

"Funny, none of my father's sayings are about that."

" _Funny,_ I wasn't aware that _your father_ is the universal arbiter of moral correctness."

"Is it annoying to always have to get the last word in?"

"I don't know, _is it?_ "

They glare at each other across the table, simultaneously predators and prey. Rebecca is _furious_ with him, for having the audacity to be exactly the person he is, the type of self-important white man who she wants to eviscerate with her words but also tear apart with her teeth. It flares in her, white-hot, suffusing her entire body, lighting her up from head to toe, and she can see that same emotion reflected back in his eyes, magnifying, burning.

Her laptop dings a notification, and she tears her eyes away from Nathaniel's, feeling something adjacent to guilt. But that's crazy, right? Fighting with this feather-haired idiot isn't something to feel guilty about.

The notification is from Josh's Instagram, informing her of a new photo: it's him and Anna, posing on the boardwalk at Venice Beach; there's no way they'll make it back to Silver Lake before Silver Brew closes. Rebecca can practically feel her heart deflating as she stares at the photo, the two of them smiling cherubically at the camera while somehow also managing to gaze into each other's eyes. It's disgusting.

"What is it?" Nathaniel asks. There's something in his tone that's wholly unfamiliar, curiosity mixed with... concern? That can't possibly be right.

"Nothing," Rebecca says, running her thumb under her eye to wipe away the errant moisture, then schooling her face back into what she hopes is a decent recreation of whatever face she was making at Nathaniel before she was assaulted by Instagram-perfect couple Josh Chan and Anna Hicks, who will probably be married in the spring under a beautiful gazebo of cherry blossoms, and she'll not only be obligated to attend but will have to see the photos for weeks afterwards under the hashtag #JoshAndAnnaRaisingEyebrows. "I, um, have a meeting to go to."

"Kill 'em with kindness," Nathaniel tells her on her way out the door, and she's pretty sure it's supposed to be a parting shot, but for some reason it sounds almost sincere.

\--

"Do you really come here every day?" Rebecca asks him. She's leaning over the table, arms stretched out in front of her like a sunbathing cat, with her latte mug nestled between her forearms.

"Most days," Nathaniel replies without looking up from his laptop. By now he's learned that if he ignores Rebecca's questions, she'll just keep badgering him out of boredom. It's been a week and a half since Rebecca found out about Josh's angel goddess girlfriend, and she's driven to Silver Brew in Silver Lake every day since, still hoping to catch a glimpse. At this point she knows that the likelihood of the two of them returning to this sad hipster coffee shop is growing slimmer by the day, but she still feels sort of hopeless without master-schemer Paula on her side, and both Valencia and Heather refuse to step into the role, no matter how much Rebecca badgers the two of them about it. It's turned into a habit born of a one night stand between desperation and inertia. Plus, she kind of likes the lattes, now that she's had them with organic small-batch agave-sweetened oat milk.

"But you probably have a fancy office, right?" She leans over lazily, cheek pillowed on her shoulder. "All leather and chrome, like a businessman sex dungeon."

"That's disgusting," Nathaniel tells her, but the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth belies his irritation. She's been seeing it more and more lately, these tiny tells that prove he isn't quite as annoyed with her as he pretends. "And yes, I do have an office, but people bother me there. Until _recently,_ no one bothered me here."

"And yet, you keep showing up." She smiles at him easily, then straightens up and redirects her attention to her laptop. She'd made it to day four of her sojourns to Silver Lake before she started feeling a little bit guilty about never actually getting any work done, especially when compared to the disgusting workaholic who continues to insist on sharing a table with her, and now she's at a roughly 50/50 ratio of working to fucking around, which might actually be higher than the ratio she maintains while physically in the office. The case she's looking at now is a motion to reconsider a variance for new construction on a plot with a slope that the West Covina Planning Commission says is too steep to build on, and it's so fucking boring that she thinks her eyes are going to melt and leak out of her face.

She only realizes that she's made a noise of frustration aloud when Nathaniel echoes the noise back to her and says, "What is it this time?"

"Come look at this," she says, waving her hand at her computer screen, where she's blown up an image of the slope in question. "I need a second opinion."

Nathaniel makes a face but gets up from his stool and circles around to Rebecca's side of the table. He towers over her when he stands at her side, and he ends up scrunched up over her shoulder so he can see the image on the screen. "What am I looking at, exactly?"

"This slope," she says, drawing a large circle around the area with her fingertip. She can feel Nathaniel's breathing, warm on the side of her face. "Can you build on that, do you think?"

"Well," Nathaniel starts, then is cut off by the bell that signals the front door opening.

"Oh my god it's Josh," Rebecca blurts out in a single exhale.

She can just barely see Nathaniel turn his head towards her in her peripheral vision. "Who?"

"Josh my ex Josh oh my god stay cool." Rebecca abruptly sits up very straight, slamming the back of her head into Nathaniel's shoulder in the process. "Oh my god, _Josh?!_ "

Josh looks over at the sound of Rebecca's voice, smiling brilliantly as always. "Becks! I didn't expect to see you here!"

"Wow, me either! What a complete and total coincidence!" She's vaguely aware of Nathaniel still hovering beside her, blocking her from coming around the table to greet Josh with the hug that her whole body craves like an ill-advised marble halvah at midnight. "It's so good to see you!"

For a second Rebecca thinks that she's really hit the jackpot: that Josh is here sans perfect pixie girlfriend, and she can ask him about her in a totally cool, just-two-exes-catching-up sort of way. But then the door jingles again and the perfect pixie herself walks in, sidling up to Josh and insinuating himself under his arm. "Oh, Josh, is this someone you know?"

Josh puffs himself up, obviously proud to show off. Anna somehow looks even more amazing in real life, like maybe the whole world is a simulation and Instagram filters are real and she's figured out how to apply them to her digital form. Rebecca feels a little dizzy just looking at her. "Rebecca Bunch, this is my girlfriend, Anna Hicks."

"Hi!" Rebecca chirps, her voice squeaking on the vowel. She feels like she's quickly unraveling right in front of everyone and will soon be nothing more than a pile of loose skin and intestines on the floor. She stands up and thrusts her hand out in Anna's direction so forcefully that Anna genuinely startles. "I'm Rebecca. It's nice to meet you."

Anna just stares at Rebecca's hand for a moment, then apologetically holds both of her own hands up, which are covered in what looks like plastic wrap. "I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of a six-day essential oil treatment to reinvigorate my skin's natural defenses and my hands are just like, _so_ oily, you know?"

Rebecca does not know, but she waves her hand in a dismissive gesture anyway. "Right, of course."

"So," Josh says, looking at Rebecca expectantly, "are you gonna introduce us to your new boyfriend?"

The panic whirls up fast in Rebecca's brain as she hears Nathaniel quickly reply, "Oh, no, she's not—"

" _Yes!_ " Rebecca screeches, turning to look at Nathaniel for the first time since Josh walked in the door. He's staring at her like she's lost her mind, which, yeah, li'l bit. She attempts to plead with him using only her eyes, but his mouth is still open as though he's ready to continue his retort, painting Rebecca to be exactly what she is: a weird loser who hangs out at coffee shops with almost-complete strangers hoping to catch a glimpse of her ex's flawless girlfriend, because even though she's not supposed to care about what he's doing or what he thinks of her, the truth is that she very much does.

So Rebecca yanks on Nathaniel's tie, dragging him down so she can kiss him.

She's surprised by how warm his mouth is, as though she expected him to be cold-blooded, like a lizard or a snake. He's clearly stupefied by this sudden development, which means his mouth is still slightly open, making the kiss soft and wet, and her teeth drag lightly over his bottom lip before she breaks away. They stare at each other for a long moment afterwards and she can't identify the exact emotion in his expression, whether he's shocked or angry or disgusted. It takes another beat before she realizes she still has a death grip on his tie, and she releases it, letting him rebound back to his full height.

" _Well,_ " Anna says pointedly, tossing her Disney princess hair over her shoulder as she turns to look over at Josh. "I'm going to order our drinks, babe." She leans over to kiss his cheek and then floats off to talk to Ichabod.

Josh is grinning from ear to ear, like a kid who's just found out where the best candy is hidden at his grandma's house. "So, how long have you two been together, uh..."

"Nathaniel," Nathaniel says in a weirdly clipped tone. He holds his hand out to Josh, and they shake, because they're two normal humans who can touch hands like normal humans do. After they separate, Nathaniel looks down at Rebecca, smile warm but eyes cold. "Yes, Rebecca, how long _have_ we been together?"

Rebecca blinks rapidly, and Nathaniel raises an eyebrow at her as if to say _you started it, you finish it._ "I mean, you know, time flies, right? How long has it been for you and Anna?"

If Josh comprehends that he's just been redirected, he doesn't show it. "Almost a month."

"Wow, yeah, it must be almost as long for us too, right, um, turtledove?" She smiles sweetly up at Nathaniel, who flickers his gaze towards the ceiling in the world's tiniest eye roll. "What's the one month anniversary present? Edible Arrangement?"

"I think it's yellow roses," Josh says, sounding utterly genuine about it in the soft lovable oafish way he has. Rebecca hears Nathaniel's soft scoff over her shoulder and elects to ignore it. Then Josh smiles, the same sunshine smile that's been knocking the breath from Rebecca's lungs for the past ten years. "I'm really happy for you, Becks."

"Oh," Rebecca says, lighting up from the inside just the way she did back on that sidewalk in New York City, when the glitter explosion had propelled her clear across the country for the barest chance of being caught in Josh's arms. _Oh,_ she thinks, feeling almost dizzy with it. _Oh, no._

Conveniently, Anna chooses this moment to reappear, sliding her arms around Josh's waist but not touching him with her plastic wrap hands. "I need you to carry the drinks, remember? We have to leave now if we're going to make it to the pop-up wine tasting at Barnsdall Art Park."

"Oh, right," Josh says. He wraps his arm around Anna's shoulders and kisses the top of her head, and Rebecca can feel each and every part of that gesture as though it's happening to her own body. It _hurts_ , suddenly, like her heart is trying to leap into her throat and sink into her stomach at the same time. Josh steps out of Anna's embrace and starts towards the counter, then seems to remember that Rebecca is still standing there being casually devastated and looks back. "It was cool to see you, Becks! We should double date sometime!"

"Ha, yeah, definitely," Rebecca says with as much enthusiasm as she can muster, waving as Josh and his future wife walk out the door, then sinks back down onto her stool, feeling exhausted. She should've known what a bad idea this was. She should know better by now. But this has been the pattern she's been stuck in for her entire life, terminally unable to learn from her past mistakes. Of course seeing Anna Hicks, Our Lady of the Immaculate Eyebrows, live and in the flesh would only serve to make Rebecca feel worse. How could she have ever thought differently?

She spends a minute or two stewing in her own misery before she becomes aware of Nathaniel again, who had at some point returned to his own side of the table and is now intently studying whatever's on the screen of his laptop. He does not in any way look like a person who was just abruptly kissed without consent in the middle of a hipster coffee shop. "Um," Rebecca says. She waits a beat for some sign that she has Nathaniel's attention, but he doesn't even twitch. "Sorry about all that."

Nathaniel doesn't even spare her a glance. "It's fine."

Rebecca blinks. "I just sexually assaulted you in the middle of this casual eatery because my ex-boyfriend thought you were my current boyfriend and you think that's _fine?_ "

"Sure," Nathaniel replies easily. "I'm not currently in any kind of monogamous relationship, and you very clearly aren't either if you're spending all your time pining after your ex."

"I am not _pining—_ "

"So it's fine." Nathaniel shrugs. "Mark another tally in the ill-advised fling column and we'll both be on our way. You won't be coming back here after today, I'm assuming, now that you've caught a glimpse of the flip flop's new ball and chain?" 

Rebecca inhales sharply through her nose. "He is not a _flip flop._ "

"He was literally wearing flip flops."

"Because we live in _Southern California._ " Rebecca clenches her hands into fists under the table, heart beating fast between her ears. "I can't believe I was starting to think you might actually have a soul."

"Huge mistake," Nathaniel replies.

" _Obviously._ " She starts furiously packing up her things, shoving her laptop and spare phone charger and the case file for that stupid slope back into her bag with abandon. As she's swinging the bag off the table and over her shoulder, the corner of it catches on her latte mug and sends it swirling off the edge and onto the floor, shattering into a dozen fragments at her feet.

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to pay for that," Ichabod calls after her as she marches off towards the exit.

She pauses dramatically at the door and looks straight at Nathaniel when she says, "You can put it on his tab."

\--

A lot can change in a few weeks. Anna breaks up with Josh. Rebecca and Paula make up. Josh and Rebecca get back together.

Nathaniel turns up at Whitefeather.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Rebecca demands when she marches into the conference room, leaving Josh to hover nervously out in the bullpen.

"Ah, Miss Bunch," Nathaniel says pleasantly, photo-false smile plastered on his lips. "My office, please?"

She hates him. She hates his stupid face and his poofy hair and his soft warm mouth. "What is this?" she demands once they're in what was formerly Darryl's office and is now apparently Nathaniel's. "Is this some kind of revenge?"

"No, not at all," Nathaniel says. "But you should know that extended absences from the office will no longer be tolerated under my leadership."

"Oh, right, like you weren't—"

"And all sexual harassment will be immediately reported to HR." He steeples his fingers and leans forward slightly in his chair. "Have I made myself clear?"

"Right," she replies flippantly, already turning to walk out the door. "Like I'd ever want to kiss _you_ again."

(She doesn't. Until she does.)


End file.
